


In the Land of Steady Habits

by ludling



Category: Nancy (2018)
Genre: And a big old scoop of depression, Drug Abuse, Gen, Kidnapping, PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-06
Updated: 2019-11-06
Packaged: 2021-01-24 06:57:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21334117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ludling/pseuds/ludling
Summary: Just the natural AU of the movie. What if Nancy was Brooke Lynch after all?Starts immediately after the PI calls Ellen, confirms matched DNA and goes from there.
Relationships: Nancy Freeman & Betty Freeman, Nancy Freeman & Ellen Lynch, Nancy Freeman & Leo Lynch
Kudos: 1





	In the Land of Steady Habits

Nancy decides to leave when she overhears the phonecall confirming she is Brooke.

The house has become too much for me and Paul she tells herself. Its cramped, not just with elegant handmade decorations, but with too many emotions. The people behind those emotions can’t help it. Nancy knows that. Mom always said so. _Give what you can, then take what you can_. Wasn’t that always their motto? They were always so alike. Everyone said so.

Her phone vibrates about fifteen minutes down the road. It pretty much doesn’t stop after that. She reaches over blindly at an intersection and holds the button that will turn it off. She can’t. Not today. Tank is dry sorry.

It’s snowing again so she drives slowly methodically. The world seems very bright this unimposing winter afternoon. Full of lights and sounds and things that are just nipping at her ankles. Paul’s meows are getting pretty cranky too. It’s a long drive for both of them.

The back catalogue of what she told the Lynches is thankfully very thin. She doesn’t think she even mentioned what town she was driving from. Just that it would take a few hours.The PI might tell them, but it’ll be a few days before they think of that. They’re decent people._That’s good honeybee,_ Ma’s voice dances through her mind, from a far away sunny outpost before the Parkinsons had made her so small. She used to wear leather mini skirts then. Her hair was red and Nancy had firmly believed she was the most beautiful woman on earth.

The first rule of gifting is to make the target believe they know more about you than you do about them. Mom’s grifts had been bigger of course. She was a natural. The guy from the Casino was probably her biggest catch, but there’d been a few others - a long running scheme based on selling ecological sanitary products in the late nineties, weight loss pills from her boot at the mall, that parking garage that didn’t check its meters properly for years- Betty had hauled in good, had hauled in, if not quite enough to buy them a house or send Nancy to college, then enough to buy the pretty clothes that would eventually attract Richard who did own a house. Lonely dumb Dick, so ripe for the picking-

_She’d wanted that kitten so badly, enough to not wrench her hand free of the tall woman who’d smiled at her and said ‘sweetheart we got even more of the little critters out back’ before pulling her through the service exit-_

Someone honks and Nancy starts, realising she’s drifted dangerously close to the other side of the road. She spots a McDonalds and steers the car in, breathing heavily. She gets a strawberry milkshake in the drive-through then sits in the parking lot staring unseeingly out of the windshield at the moving highway. _It’s only because you’ve been getting weirdly deep into this one_ she tells herself very firmly. It was all part of the world you created for them for a minute out of kindness. A world where their daughter was alive. Method acting that was it. She was a method actor, had inherited the gift from Mom through her very blood, even if she did keep it small time to entertaining snippets about North Korea, to pretending she was pregnant-

Her phone is still black and silent. Nancy regards it the same way she might regard a viper. Somewhere a few hours back Ellen has either given up calling or is still hearing Nancy’s generic voicemail, not even her voice, because she’d never bothered to program anything in- just _this number is unavailable, please leave a message after the t_one.

She feels bad for leaving Ellen to that impersonal voice. She likes Ellen. Had liked her from the moment she saw her on TV. There was something comforting in her. Surely she’s very kind to her students too, will leave them thoughtful comments on badly written essays, and would kiss their hair when they ran back from the quiet tree-house where they’d been pretending to be princesses caught by a dragon-

Nancy thumps her head slowly against the steering wheel, just willing her brain to leave her be. If Mom were still alive, this is where she might deign to call her. Sometimes she loses herself in her own lie like this. Like that time at her graduation, where she pretended she was an orphan who hadn’t seen her real parents in years to the keynote speaker and the story had become so moving that she’d spent her ceremony in a flood of tears in the principals office.

That was always the thing that kept her from being truly great like Mom. She lost herself in the lie, and she didn’t always take something out of it. She was like Robin Hood who forgot to actually steal the gold.

But again if Mom were still alive Nancy feels like this would be something she’d truly be horrified by.

Ever since she could remember their scams had one golden rule above all others: they were always mother and daughter. Sure Mom would vary the circumstances. Sometimes Nancy was a child of her dead true love, and Mom was a wilting flower too tragic to speak. Lots of guys liked that one. They smelled the story on Betty like dogs.

Other times she was the product of rape. Nancy did not like that one. It attracted a certain kind of guy whose eyes would slide over to her at dinner. A guy who might accidentally walk in on her in the bathroom. A guy who’s hugs always lasted just a second too long.

But mostly they’d just been Mother and Daughter. Refugees of an average relationship in an average place. Much like every other single parent in the state. The boyfriends who were with them in this unsteady country were all different but all kind of the same. Some liked motorbikes and rock music. So accordingly Nancy spent her thirteenth birthday in a princess dress at a dive bar, and even got to go for a ride on Greg’s Harley around the parking lot. The photos were always Mom’s favourite. Others were welfare bound and prone to the bottle. Some of those were nice. Most were forgettable and asleep for most of their acquaintance.Some were strangely proper. Nancy is actually decent at tennis and telling dessert spoons apart, thanks to her summer at the local country club. She had her first kiss with a valet behind one of the trimmed hedges. Both kiss and setting had felt weird.

There is one thing that nags at her though. She cannot remember anything from when she was a small child. She knows most peoples memories are vague. But there’s not even any ancillary informsation. No familiar stories mom told her until they were as well worn as the ground underneath them. No cousins squawking ‘_remember when you were two and you ... ’_. Nothing. The cousin Mom said she adopted Nancy from never showed up at any birthday parties or family bbqs. Auntie Sal was a constant in those years. ‘_Cousins must have better things to do this year’_ she’d say and wink at her. And that was that on the subject.

In her car Nancy raises her head.

Auntie Sal.

She’d been at the funeral, but they hadn’t spoken much, because she always made Nancy feel oddly uncomfortable. Like her sidelong stare unravelled all the little white lies she told every day and revealed them for what they were: little and mean.

Her house is actually closer than Nancy’s own. It would be a matter of half an hour to drive over to her and get this cleared up once and for all. Sal would know where Mom stashed her birth certificate. Or she’d at least be willing to dish out a little more about the cousins now that Mom was dead. Nancy always held the curious idea that Sal wasn’t intimidated by Ma like most people, but that Ma had something on her.

She looks at her phone again. Slowly she reaches over and holds the ON switch. Then she drops it in her cup holder, and steps out into the snow to throw away her half drunk milkshake. Her stomach feels tight and gurgle from the the cold and the sugar. She throws up next to the bin. Wipes her mouth and blinks against the chill.

When she closes the drivers door she looks at her phone. There’s a stack of badges on the home screen. Missed calls mostly, but also a string of messages. She slides it open with numb fingers. Ellen has called 23 times in the two hours she’s been on the road. There’s another number which has called three times which she assumes is Leo.

The little bubble above her messages tells her she has 14 new messages. They are all from Ellen. She scrolls up to the top, until she can see the photo she sent to this woman on the day she saw the TV program. Her face is alien to her. She looks frightened. Like someone asking for help rather than giving it. Underneath are some of their earlier pleasantries. The Lynches address, sent both as a text and as a pin on Google Maps. A obviously restrained reminder to drive safe. Then the new messages.

13.43: Where are you?

13.47: Please call me back. DNA results are in.

13.50: Are you alright? Has something happened?

13.55: Please answer Nancy. We are both worried

14.04: Honey, please text me back and let me know you’re alright

14.07: We understand this is a lot. We would never want to overwhelm you. Just please text me to let me know you’re not hurt.

14.10: If it’s too much Leo has a colleague that would be happy to talk to you. Anytime you want- we’ll work around your schedule.

14.13: The roads around the county are bad today so please be careful!! Do you have chains on your wheels? I should have had Leo check them.

14.17: Please let me know you’re alright.

14.18 Please.

14.22: I know this is a lot to take in. The police would like to do a second test just to be sure, but I knew from the moment you sent me your photo. I knew you. I can’t believe you’ve come back to us.

14.30: I’ve missed you so much all these years. We both have.

14.45: Hi Nancy, Leo here. Let us know you’re okay kiddo? Ellen is not doing so good not knowing

14.48: I’m sorry that I didn’t believe it. It just seemed to good to be true. Please don’t let us down. We’ve waited for you for so long. Leo.

The edge of panic threatens to wash over her again. _We’ve waited for you for so long_. They hadn’t, because somehow that DNA lab had screwed up, and this wasn’t what Nancy had signed up for. She’d wanted to give the Lynches a few days reprieve, let them live for a moment in a world where their daughter hadn’t been abducted by a serial killer or whatever had happened to the poor kid, then part ways. This was too far. This would really hurt them.

Paul was still meowing pathetically. She had a cat since she could remember. Mom had made a point of buying her a new one every time the previous one died. Like it was a caveat in a contract they had.

Her fingers hover over the screen. Sal is the answer. Sal will know what to do. She types out her own message, hits send, and powers off her phone again.

15.44: I’m okay. Don’t worry.

***

If Aunt Sal is surprised when she knocks on the door just after six, she doesn’t show it.

“Grab a plate and sit down”

Roast is Sal’s specialty. Nancy never had the stomach for it, would push the pieces around her plate as a child until she was released from the dinner table. Wasn’t like they were paying attention to her anyway. As long as she remembers Sal and Mom were either fighting, or in deep kahootz. Both meant that she was pretty much left to her own devices.

Robert is there as always. He grunts a friendly hello, then turns back to his own piece of meat. The house smells much the same as Nancy remembers. Robert’s pipe smoke is only thinly masked by the air freshener Sal sprays on every surface. Paul leaps on Roberts lap and settles in.

“Toto is it?” Sal asks eyeing the ginger cat.

Nancy shakes her head. “Paul. Toto got run over two years back.” He’d actually been put down at the vet for a heart murmur. Sometimes Nancy hears herself say something and is startled by how untrue it is.

Sal eyes her for so long that if Nancy were a less experienced liar she’d squirm. But it’s a relatively white lie so why split hairs? Toto’s dead either way. Her grief is real.

“So you’ve come to talk about your Ma?”

Nancy wishes she could hold Sal’s eye as she nods. There’s an air of inevitability in Sal’s tone, as if she always knew that one day they’d be sitting at this table having this conversation.

“There were no cousins were there?” Nancy asks, looking Sal full in the face. Sal tilts her head, and Nancy feels stupid, stupid for having half believed this obvious lie well into her thirties for gods sake-

“I wondered at the time” Sal says and Nancy senses that she’s being careful with her words now. Arranging them in a way that will hurt the least. Nancy has a feeling they’ll hurt no matter what. “When she first introduced you to us. I’d lost track of her for a few months some years back, and I thought alright so Betty gave up a kid and now she’s changed her mind. Good for her.”

Nancy sags in relief. That is a likelier story. Betty had been in trouble, hadn’t managed to make it work, that’s why her memories are so readily filled by two poor strangers who lost a daughter-

“But it didn’t make any sense. There was no reason to hide you for so long. And you were such a well raised little thing. Not the least bit feral, like we were for all our beatings from the nuns”

Sal flattens her hands on the linoleum tabletop. Nancy leans forward, willing that to be it, because not being feral was not damning evidence, it didn’t preclude kidnapping or any other nefarious crimes-

“And sometimes- early on mind you- you’d talk about your other home. Your treehouse and your music box that Mom played to help you sleep. You’d talk about the room of photos in the attic-“

Nancy slumps back, hearing and not hearing Sal.

“And then after about a year you stopped talking about those things. I guess you just forgot. I mean life with Betty sure wasn’t boring was it?”

“And I guess you tried to forget huh Sal?” Nancy says surprised by the amount of bitterness in her voice.

Sal winces but nods. “It wasn’t my place. Your Mom would have disappeared again and taken you with her.” She looks.. old. Haggard. “And she was my sister. Used to be my favourite person in the world in fact” She nudges Robert’s arm “Before you honey of course”

“She used to be my favourite person too” Nancy says.

“I know Nancy” Sal says. “If you like- I know she wasn’t that keen on taking any kinds of pictures of you in those fist few years, but I have a few bits of you from back in those days? Didn’t tell her I took them.”

Nancy nods. She feels very tired from the day suddenly.

“I’ll get the couch ready for you baby. Don’t even try to drive in that weather.”

“Alright Sal”

***

Nancy wakes up the next morning and for a moment doesn’t know where she is. Paul is curled up on her chest and she feels worried for no reason she can name. Did she forget some part of a grift?

When she was eight she’d fucked up one of their marks. It had been an old guy working in a motel and letting them stay for free. Nancy had really dug the breakfast buffet. Pancakes were definitely her favourite food.

It had been such a stupid screw up too. Her mom had called herself Rhonda that time, and Nancy had been Ainsling. She’d been doodling in her story journal by the pool. Writing her name over and over again. Not Ainsling. Brooke. Nancy can see the looping _B_ in front of her as if it were yesterday. It was a muscle memory. Then the old man had seen and had blown his top. To be fair the grift was going badly anyway. Mom had only sunk so low as to get away from Roger who hit her when they were drunk. He was only meant to be a small stepping stone on to a greyhound out of there. Mom had been lazy.

‘_I’m so sorry I wasn’t there to protect you’_ Ellen’s voice floats through her subconscious.

And just like that she knows where she is. On Sal’s shitty pull-out after discovering that she’d been lied to pretty solidly by everyone around her for most of her life.

She says no to breakfast and leaves with a box of old videotapes and photo albums.

“I want those back young lady” Sal calls after her “I’ll never be that skinny again”

Nancy gives her the finger as she shoves the box on to her passenger seat.

The drive home at least is familar. Sal was a constant presence before the Parkinson’s. Mom and her had some sort of row shortly after she was diagnosed. At first Nancy assumed it would blow over like all their other fights. But it hadn’t, and as Ma got meaner Nancy found herself wishing for Sal, but never quite brave enough to call her. To ask for help.

The house is just as she left it four days ago. She digs out some cat food for Paul, and opens a fresh quart of milk for his bowl. Then she sits on the couch. The responsible thing to do would be to turn on her phone and call Ellen and Leo back. Heck maybe even the temp agency. Her mom dying would probably extinguish that fire. But only for so many days.

Instead she pops the frozen pizza she picked up in the supermarket on the way into the oven, changes into her sweats and jams the first VHS cassette into the ancient player. ‘_Summer 1989_’ is written on the edge in Sal’s messy scrawl.

All family home videos are alike, in that they are fascinating to the family in question, but boring to everyone else on earth. Nancy falls somewhere in the middle. She gets a good laugh out of Sal’s interesting mullet haircut, and is pretty bored right until the end of the shakily recorded family BBQ. There’s a commotion, and the camera spins-

Nancy had sometimes wondered whether her memories of her mother were clouded in youthful admiration. Especially in the depressing few months after the Parkinson’s leeched away at her, where all Mom seemed to be able to do was to complainand sit on her ass and get fat. Surely this wasn’t the same woman who’s make-up she’d once tried to steal in a desperate attempt to emulate her better?

But the Betty on screen has stepped straight out of Nancy’s best memories. She’s wearing cat-like sunglasses, her red hair and lipstick flash in the sun, her leather pants look like she’s poured into them and her smile is just as devil-may-care as she remembers.

She’s kneeling in front of the TV without even realising it, pushing the remaining crusts of her pizza aside. “Mom..” She says touching the glass, feeling the static, the faint buzz of electricity almost like the charge Betty herself must have given off in that long gone summer, so vibrant and alive-

There’s someone at Betty’s elbow. A flash of blue, and Nancy remembers that blue dress, remembers how pretty she’d felt in it. How she liked to pair it with her ruffles socks and white Mary Janes because Mom said it made her look like a girl from a picture book-

But the girl who enters the screen isn’t Nancy at all.

It’s Brooke.

***

Cleaning a whole house can actually take as long as a person wants to.

Nancy starts in the living room. She throws out garbage bag after garbage bag of _National Geopgraphics_. She sells Betty’s jewellery, her bedroom television set, her collection of mismatched silver piece by piece on Craigslist. She finds and empties her pillboxes and throws them out. She holds on to a few of the more serious painkiller prescriptions. After a long moment she swallows one, pretending its an orange tic tac. They were her favourite when she was a kid.

Things get pleasantly fuzzy after that. She knows she has a bath mid-way through cleaning the bathroom. She stays underwater for a long time. There’s a part of her that realises how very easy it would be to die here. There’s another part of her that just doesn’t care.

She emerges coughing a few minutes later. Throws up in her bath water. Drags herself out of the bath and wraps herself in Betty’s old bathrobe. Its gotten cold in the room meanwhile. She wishes Paul would come, but that’s the trouble with cats, they’ll never come when you want them to.

She fumbles with the pocket of her jeans and manages to boot up her phone. It vibrates again, but the screen is undulating strangely and she can’t make out any of the badges. She presses her last missed call, fairly certain as to who it’ll ring.

“Nancy?” Ellen picks up on the second ring, even though it’s dark outside and Nancy has a sneaking suspicion its somewhere in the neighbourhood of three in the morning.

For a moment she can’t answer. Nancy was who her Mom called. Nancy was someone who had a blue dress with frilly socks.

“Sweetheart? Are you there?” Ellen asks again.

And then the memory comes. Her nightlight picking out the gold in Ellen’s hair. The song they sang together before bed time. How scared she’d been at the mall, even after she was holding the kitten the red-haired woman had promised, because Mommy would wonder where she had gone, would be scared-

“I’m so sorry” She manages “I’m so fucking-” Sorry or high, she doesn’t know which one she would have ended up saying because she chokes on her own spit, or whatever awful emotions are clawing their way up through the medication-

“Nancy where are you? Are you alright? No- Leo I’m asking now-“

She gives them her address, hangs up and then lays back on her bathmat for another moment. They’ll be at least three hours. More if they drive carefully like they told her to so often. She can be presentable in three hours. She can put together a tableau of her life that is infinitely more comforting than the one they’d see right now.

She showers, makes herself throw up again, finishes cleaning the bathroom and then sets to making the remaining furniture look presentable with a small vacuum. She lights a candle Jeb sent her before he saw her at the supermarket. It has a picture of Our Lady of Sorrows wrapped around it. Nancy considers removing the paper then decides against it.

She wants to lock Mom’s room, but somehow feels like that wouldn’t be fair. She stole from them, so they should have the opportunity to steal from her. It’s four thirty-two by the digital clock next to Betty’s bed. Nancy should sleep, but can’t face the idea of laying alone in the dark for even a second. The TV is still frozen on Brooke, half hidden behind Betty’s leather-clad leg, not really smiling because all these people are strangers to her, but not quite scared either. Curious.

After considering her for a long moment Nancy hits play again. Brooke is hefted up by a younger version of Robert. They look at each other for a moment then grin, before Sal pulls the little girl into her arms. She kisses her all over her face and now Brooke squirms to get away-

The doorbell rings.

Nancy squints past the static on the TV at the time which is barely edging past eight which can’t be right she only closed her eyes for a minute-

Ellen and Leo look distinctly worse for wear. Leo’s winter coat is rumpled, Ellens hair is flat on one side and they both look as though they’ve been crying.

“Come in” She says, feeling strangely like she should make a move to hug them, but having no idea how one would begin such a move.

She watches them take off their coats, exchange a quick glance and-

“Thanks for coming” She says “It was very kind. You guys didn’t have to.”

Ellen looks at her sharply. “We were worried” Behind her Leo is looking around while not doing a very good job of hiding it “You were slurring your words honey”

She nods. There’s a dimension where she could tell Betty about lifting one of her oxies but there’s probably not a one where she can tell ever Ellen. She wouldn’t forget. She’d take it so very seriously that Nancy’s stomach lurches just thinking about the possibility. Leo is still staring at her.

“Had a few drinks I guess” she mumbles after a moment, pushing her hair back behind her ears. Ellen reaches out and tucks a loose strand with the rest. If Nancy threw up on them could she blame it on a respectable non-destructive amount of wine?

“Do you guys want some coffee? I don’t-“ She looks towards the kitchen “I don’t have a lot in the house- but we could always go out I guess or-“

“Coffee will be lovely” Ellen says quickly. Her eyes have not moved from Nancy’s face either. Nancy feels herself getting uncomfortable. She’s gets weird when she’s uncomfortable. Everyone always said so. ‘Oh awkward goose is back is she’ Mom used to say- laugh really, and even though it hurt her feelings it kind of made it okay too. She was strange. Always had been. The cousins had raised strange habits in her.

“Uh cool” She gestures to the sofa “I sold the dining set but have a seat there. I’ll just get some coffee going.”

Leo points to the static filled screen. “Watching movies?” It’s as much as he’s said to her the whole time he’s been here. And suddenly she feels pity for him. Another awkward goose.

“Uh home videos actually”

“Oh?” Ellen sits and pulls Leo down with her.

“Yeah I asked my Aunt Sal- or Sal I guess- and Mom wasn’t keen on cameras back then but Sal snuck some past her” There will be a moment when they see the little girl on the tape Nancy knows. The little girl is long gone and she’s all that’s left. She rewinds the tape right back to the start, presses play, then retreats quickly to the kitchenette.

The sound of that long ago summer party fill the living room again. For a moment Nancy wonders if she can make coffee fast enough to cut the tape of at the crucial point, so they only see the little girls arm-

The sound of commotion and Nancy knows she’s missed her chance.

“That’s Mom” She says over the boiling water “When she was younger” Neither Ellen or Leo turn back to her. The camera angles, and even the TV isn’t loud enough to cover Ellen’s gasp.

They watch Brooke at the party in silence. Don’t look back at Nancy once. When she takes them the tray with their three mugs, the plunger and cream, she sees that Leo’s face is wet. He takes off his glasses and hides his face in his hands. Ellen seems far off.

Nancy sits on the opposite armchair. She looks at her feet for a long moment. She’s not the little girl in the video. Even the little girl wasn’t Brooke for much longer. She hears the tape click off. The sound of static fills the living room.

Someone takes her hands. Ellen has knelt on the ground next to her. Her right hand tucks a strand of hair behind Nancy’s ear. She opens her mouth to speak, then closes it again. Nancy leans forward, inhaling her perfume for the first time in thirty years. It makes her think of the music box, the light picking out the gold in her curls, the feeling of lying under a desk on the patterned scratchy rug as someone typed above her -

“What happens now?” She mumbles into the curls behind Ellen’s ear.

“Well the police will have to reopen the case, do another official DNA test-“

Nancy pulls back. Ellen hovers where she left her a moment longer, the corners of her mouth lifting seemingly without her permission. Then she frowns. She seems to be tottering between laughing and crying. Nancy can appreciate the feeling.

“Would you-“ She turns back to her husband who lifts his face out of his hands to meet her gaze. An unspoken agreement seems to coalesce between them “Would you like to come home with us sweetheart?”

Nancy bites her lip. It would be so easy. Like sliding back into a warm bath after having been in a cold room without realising for hours. She can see what Ellen wants. The three of them, living like a little nuclear family, albeit aged up a little, like the past few days but more, because now they know it is true she is really Brooke, never belonged to Betty for a second of her whole life-

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea” Nancy steels her self against the way Ellen’s face falls. It’s not a good idea. It isn’t, right? She is the shape Mom made her. No amount of retrograde parenting is gonna change that. “I’ve got a lot of loose ends to tie up around here before the realtor takes the keys-“

“You’re moving?” Leo says from behind Ellen. They have the same eyes Nancy realises. She inherited her eyes from this man.

“I think so” She says, finally giving voice to the plan that has been floating around in her mind since she found Ma, cold and lifeless. “I always wanted to travel. I’ve never even been out of the state.”

“We went to Hawaii when you were three” Ellen says, and Nancy braces herself for any memory that this might dredge up. “Leo had a conference” Nothing comes and Nancy figures that three must be the limit for weird sensory recollections.

“Well you can’t travel while you’re involved with a pending police investigation kiddo” Leo says, and Ellen visibly relaxes in front of him.

“Besides- you need your birth certificate to apply for a passport.” Nancy stiffens, here comes the pressure at last. “I could make you a copy if you like” Ellen says quickly and Nancy feels rotten for even having thought that. Betty might have held it over her for months, but she doubts it even crossed Ellen’s mind.

“But the police will still have to put in the paperwork to say you’re Brooke Lynch. And then you’d have to get a new Social Security number. That could take months kiddo”

Ellen shoots him another sharp look over her shoulder.

“How did you get your current number? How did your.. Mom even enrol you for school?”

Nancy smiles because it’s endearing how trusting they are, how consummately they’ve lived their lives inside the line.

“Ma knew a guy” She says. Both Ellen and Steve frown at that.

They sit in an awkward silence for another long moment.

“How long have you lived here?” Ellen asks, gesturing to the room at large. Nancy can’t help but compare it to their bright and decorated house. It seems very dark and dingy suddenly.

“Uh since I was about sixteen” Ellen nods, and seems oddly to be blinking back tears again.

She waves Leo’s hands away when he reaches for her. Her smile is watery. “I was just thinking- that was the year after the false alarm. I used to look at teen magazines in the supermarket checkout. I wondered who you liked, who’s posters you had up-“

“I liked the Backstreet Boys” Nancy admits, feeling herself blush. “Ma always made fun of me for all the posters. Said my room looked like a hair gel ad.”

“So she bought the house when you were sixteen or-“ Leo starts, setting the table for the obvious lie she could tell here. _Yeah, Ma bought the house. She worked really hard at her real estate job, and saved up, and she really meant well, because she put their daughter into four walls, even if they were dingier than what she should have grown up in-_

“It was Richards house actually-this guy she was seeing. He left it to her in his will. Creepy Uncle Dick” She laughs, ignoring the way both their expressions have frozen “I didn’t spend a lot of time at home that year” She tries to say this jokingly, as if Dicks pawing hands under the table were funny, just like his lumbering attempts to get into her bedroom in the wee hours. Ha ha! What a lark her junior year of high school was.

Leo clears his throat. “I have a colleague who specialises in that sort of thing you know. Traumatic childhoods. I think it would be helpful to you Nancy.”

He meets her eyes as he says this, and Nancy is surprised by the mix of emotions therein. Anger yes. But no pity. Just a desire to help. He must be a good therapist. Careful and reserved, but good.

“Leo and I have both been to therapy regularly over the years” Ellen says, and touching her hand again and bringing her back to the present. “Only if it’s something you’re comfortable with”

Nancy shrugs. “I don’t mind” because she really doesn’t. She can decide exactly what to tell this therapist. Just like she decides with everyone in her life. If it makes Ellen and Leo happy, she’ll do it. They deserve a little happiness.

“Uh well, I guess I can come stay after the house is cleared out if you guys really don’t mind then.” Her eyes flit to Leo “I’d have to bring Paul”

“Yeah” Leo says. He exchanges another quick glance with Ellen. “Anytime you want.”

***

Anytime turns out to be a whole month later.

She could have finished everything up in a weekend, three days tops, but Ma’s ashes gnaw at her. She can’t very well bring the urn with her to the Lynch home. She doesn’t want that conversation. She’s not sure she’d survive it honestly.

Ma didn’t have any favourite spots in nature either. Nancy and her had been decidedly different in that respect. Nature was a place for Ma to stomp out her cigarettes. Maybe a place to piss if she was desperate. Nancy had spent most of her teenage years in the woods. That’s where she’d want her ashes spread.

In the end she tips the contents of the expensive polished urn into an old jumbo container of dry cat food. The thing even has a lid. She’ll hide it from Ellen and Leo, but a bucket of cat food was a fuck tonne easier to explain than an urn.

The police come around. Once to swab the inside of her mouth with another cotton bud, and then to take her statement. She honestly can’t remember much, but the detectives smile at her anyway and look at her pictures from North Korea. "Amazing that you got in” one of them says as he leaves.

The usual hit of pride doesn’t come. She feels annoying. Like she’s taken up the spotlight for something trivial. She chews on the inside of her lip after they leave. Ma’s meds are still jammed into the bottom of her purse. She takes one and lets the afternoon drift away.

Ellen is in contact in some small way every day. Nancy’s pretty sure the Lynches’ are scared she’ll disappear in a puff of smoke if she isn’t kept an eye on. Sometimes they call, asking how the moving is going, sometimes Ellen sends a few photos of old photos to Nancy’s phone. Brooke on a pony at her fifth birthday party. Brooke in the lake, skinny arms held by inflatables. The three of them on a sunlit meadow on some long gone afternoon, a picnic spread out between them.

The texts are a daily thing. ‘Good morning sweetheart- hope you have a good day’ or ‘Watch out for black ice- Leo heard on the news it’s going to be bad tonight!’

Nancy replies as best she can. Smiley faces, thank yous and wilcos, carefully edited replies, and once when she’s conked out on painkillers a little emoji heart. Ma was never like this. Once when she was in community college, as an experiment, Nancy had stayed out at a party until two in the morning. She didn’t talk to anyone. Just sat on a couch, sipping cheap beer from a red cup. Ma hadn’t even bothered to message. And when she did it was only to remind Nancy to pick up her script the next day.

She carefully refuses their offers to help her pack up. She doesn’t want to see them handling Ma’s things. Her little life. Doesn’t want to see it’s meanness when picked up by two strangers.It’s Nancy’s burden in some deep way. Only Nancy’s.

They drive out a few more times to see her. The first time is a surprise and Nancy isn’t sure she manages to hide her slurred speech for the whole of their impromptu coffee date. Ellen keeps looking at her with a tiny line between her brows. But Nancy garbles some story about the flu and by the end she almost believes it herself. Ellen wants to stay and help until she gets better, nearly insists even though Leo is visibly uncomfortable, but Nancy wriggles out of that one too.

She throws a lot of stuff out. Ma was getting to be something of a hoarder. By the time Nancy gets to her own room she doesn’t see why she shouldn’t continue. The one concession has been what she has started to think of as Brooke’s box. She puts a few of her old report cards in there, some photo albums, what’s left of her arts folder and her little lockable journal full of stories from her preteens. Auntie Sal’s videos go in there too. She hasn’t quite managed to bring herself to watch more of them. But Ellen and Leo will probably want to and who is she to stop them?

Everything else, clothes that she never wears, old textbooks, little trinkets and stubs she’s held on for memories sake, all of that goes in black rubbish bags.

She feels lighter with every piece she throws away. Pretty soon she’d be able to just float away.

She’ll be anyone she wants to be.

Her hair is lightening at the roots again. She eyes it in the mirror every night. Parts it and considers the colour. Ma had called it ‘mousy’ so she’d dyed it since she turned fifteen. With henna like Ma at first, then darker and darker, until she hit black on her twentieth birthday.

She sold the TV, so when Tuesday rolls around she drives down to the mall and spends the money on a hairdressing appointment. “It’s pretty damaged” The hairdresser says, chewing gum and rubbing a few strands of the straw-like black hair between her fingers “Don’t know how well it’ll come out. You want to go all the way back to your natural hair colour?”

It comes out okay all things considered. Her hair is a chestnut brown according to the hairdresser. She doesn’t look more like the girl in the age progression shot. She keeps trying to work out who she looks like. It hits her while brushing her teeth. Ellen. She looks a little like Ellen. Especially since her hair has regained a little bit of its original curl. She forgot about that curl.

She’s due to drive up, cat and life in tow, in two days. It feels odd, leaving a place she has called home for near twenty years without any particular feeling of sadness. The house was always just a house. Ma lived in it, so Nancy had lived in it.

That was all there was to it.

***

Neither Ellen or Leo are at home when she arrives.

Ellen has a class to teach, and it’s one of Leo’s full days at the practice. Nancy thinks that they’re giving her space to settle in. They’ve left her a set of new keys (_Under the flower pot by the backdoor_ Ellen had texted the night before), a bunch of ingredients for sandwiches out on the kitchen bench, and a little note saying they’d both be home soon. (And to _be good _ which tightens something in Nancy’s heart that doesn’t bear thinking about)

When she looks in Brooke’s room it’s changed. The childish decorations are gone, no doubt packed up neatly and in the attic. The room is expectant in the late winter light. There’s a new bed, a new desk, and a bookshelf filled with books. A pretty, ethnic rug lays on the wooden floor. There’s even a blue stitched cat bed for Paul.

She leaves him there as she lugs the rest of her stuff upstairs. It’s barely two garbage bags worth and her box of memories. She puts Ma’s ashes on top of the shelf. Steps back to make sure they can’t be seen easily.

Then she sits on the bed.

The house is warm. They must have left the heating on for her. She eyes the bookshelf again. The bottom row is full of classics, things that Brooke had probably been read to from. Nancy angles her head. Anne of the Green Gables, The Wind in the Willows, The Chronicles of Narnia - all stories of lost people- Nancy thinks wryly.

The next shelf up is more interesting. They’re obviously books Ellen had thought she might enjoy. Nancy reads the authors names. Some she’s heard of-Atwood, Faulkner, Alcott, Steinbeck - others are unfamiliar- Carson, Faber, Borges, Carter - she sits up, feeling herself getting dizzy.

The tree outside her window is still bare. She wonders what kind of leaves it will have in the summer. She thinks it might be a flowering tree. A memory worries at the edge of her mind, of sitting here, watching this tree with the window open-

A cup of coffee and a bit of toast with butter makes a nice late lunch. Both are deposited on her bedside table and wait as she chooses a book. She wants to choose something challenging, something high brow so Ellen will be impressed, but her hand moves to Anne of the Green Gables almost without meaning to. She settles on the bed, Paul leaps into her lap a second later, and begins to read. It’s half familiar and half completely new.

She must fall asleep at some point, because when she wakes next its dark. Someone has pulled her bedclothes over her. Her book is on the table. Paul is still asleep at her feet.

When she looks over Nancy isn’t really surprised to see Ellen asleep on the makeshift cot.

She thinks about the kitten, the way Ellen touched her hair, the zeros in her bank account after the house sale. She thinks about her tree house, and how she’ll be here until at least the spring, if only to see if the blossoms on the tree outside her window will be as yellow as she remembers.

Ellen will make her breakfast tomorrow, and Leo will hang around, not really speaking to her, but the two of them warming up to each other all the time. She thinks about Ma, hidden on the bookshelf as dust and captured on all the tapes she’s yet to watch, laughing and red-haired. Thinks about the pills hidden in her make-up bag, always there if she needs an exit, a muffler.

Nancy closes her eyes. She better get some rest. She’s looking forward to tomorrow. She doesn’t know what it will bring.

But for the first time in so many years she’s just looking forward to finding out.


End file.
